Adriana Craciun is University of California Presidential Chair at the University of California, Riverside, USA. She has previously taught at the University of London and the University of Nottingham. She is the author of numerous works on British literature and culture, the history of exploration and Arctic studies.
Simon Schaffer is Professor of History of Science at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is coeditor of The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (1999) and of The Brokered World: Go-betweens and Global Intelligence 1770-1820 (2009). 

List of illustrations.- Acknowledgements.- Introduction; Adriana Craciun and Simon Schaffer.- PART I: NATURAL CURIOSITIES.- 1. Essay: Handling objects in natural history collections; Mary Terrall.- 2. Exhibit: Curious work; Mary Brooks.- 3. Exhibit: The lives of Mrs Delaney's paper plants; Kim Sloan.- 4. Exhibit: A pathological pot; Samuel J.M.M. Alberti.- 5. Essay: The seeds of disaster: relics of La Pérouse; Adriana Craciun.- PART II: TOOLS AND TRAVELS.- 6. Essay: A Bird in the hand, or, manufacturing credibility in the instruments of Enlightenment science; Richard Dunn.- 7. Exhibit: Mapping new spaces; Patricia Seed.- 8. Exhibit: By hand or by engine; Richard Dunn.-

9. Exhibit: The ship as object: the launch of the Queen Charlotte; James Davey.- 10. Exhibit: Instrument of controversy: two copies of the Nautical Almanac; Sophie Waring.- 11. Exhibit: The Navy's new clothes; Amy Miller.- 12. Essay: Unwrapping gods: illuminating encounters with gods, comets and missionaries; Maia Nuku.- PART III: ARTIFICIAL CURIOSITIES.- 13. Essay: Persons and things; Jonathan Lamb.- 14. Exhibit: The fabric of domestic life: rethinking the humble painted cloth; Tara Hamling.- 15. Exhibit: The Willdey telescope: instrument for fashion, learning and amusement; Alexi Baker.- 16. Exhibit: Cataloguing curiosities: Whitby's barkcloth book; Billie Lythberg.- 17. Exhibit: Art and things: Fragonard's colour box; Hannah Williams.- 18. Exhibit: Keep within compass; Katy Barrett.- 19. Exhibit: Perfected thing: a lay figure by Paul Huot; Jane Munro.- PART IV: EXOTIC GOODS.- 20. Essay: A home away from home: Sophie Magdalene's clockwork chinoiserie; Josefine Baark.- 21. Exhibit: The Chinese tallow tree: from asset in Asia to curse in Carolina; Charles Jarvis.- 22. Exhibit: Global connections: Punch, porcelain and maritime material culture; John McAleer.- 23. Exhibit: A damaged and discarded thing; Anne Gerritsen.- 24. Exhibit: Sarah Sophia Banks, Adam Afzelius and a coin from Sierra Leone; Catherine Eagleton.- 25. Exhibit: A Pacific macrocosm: Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique; Billie Lythberg.- 26. Exhibit: Columen vitae: pharmaceutical packaging 1750-1850; Jennifer Basford.- 27. Essay: Tropical lifestyles, luxury and the health of Britain's global power, 1793-1825; Jonathan Eacott.- PART V: WORLDS ON PAPER.- 28. Essay: Extra-illustrations: the order of the book and the fantasia of the library; Luisa Calè.- 29. Exhibit: Paperslips; Leanna McLaughlin.- 30. Exhibit: Advertising and print culture in the eighteenth century; Philippa Hubbard.- 31. Exhibit: Kitty Fisher: the commodification of celebrity; Faramerz Dabhoiwala.- 32. Exhibit: An admirable typology; Billie Lythberg, Maia Nuku and Amiria Salmond.- 33. Essay: Connoisseurship and the communication of anatomical knowledge: the case of William Cheselden's Osteographia (1733); Alexander Wragge-Morley.- Bibliography.- Index.-

In this book the eighteenth century Enlightenment receives an important reassessment, using an astonishing range of materials and objects drawn from Europe and beyond, including artefacts from India and China, West Africa and Polynesia. A series of authoritative essays written by experts in the field explores the full range of material culture in the long eighteenth century, raising crucial questions about notions of property and invention, homely and commercial lives. The book also includes a series of well-illustrated exhibits, a startling and provocative assemblage of objects from the Enlightenment world, each accompanied by expert commentaries. The collection of essays and exhibits is the result of collaborative debate by scholars from Europe and north America, who have together worked on the cross-disciplinary importance of material history in making sense of how past society was fundamentally transformed through the world of goods.